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Twenty years ago today — November 15, 1990 — I received my very first copy of my very first novel. Golden Fleece was a mass-market paperback original from Warner Questar. It was technically a December 1990 title, but books trickle into stores a bit in advance of the publication month.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Brian Thomsen, who was my editor, has since passed away, and Warner wrapped up the Questar line shortly after publishing my book (a few years later, they launched their new SF imprint, Aspect).

Sawyer gives us something rare in this age of the quotidian hero: a genuine tragedy. It is no accident that he invokes Greek myth in the title of the book. Sawyer is willing to play on the same field as Aeschylus and Euripides, and he proves himself equal to the task.

JASON is, in my opinion, the deepest computer character in all of science fiction. And Aaron is, in my opinion, one of the most well-drawn, fallible, human detectives I’ve encountered in mystery fiction — in a league with, say, [Ruth] Rendell’s Inspector Wexford.

You might as well buy two copies in the first place — one to read and keep, and one to shove at your friends, saying, “Read this! Now!”

How good is Golden Fleece? A friend of mine — an English professor — used to ask, whenever he saw me, `Why are you still writing that spaceship stuff?’ Now I can answer. Because this is possible.